Although the Orthodox community is committed to the existing ketubah document, whose language comes from the Mishnah, Blau said he has no problem with a bride and a groom making additional agreements and commitments, as long as they do not controvert Jewish law.
The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is a hip amalgam of modern art. Daniel Liebeskind\’s peculiar architectural dazzle looks like a giant Rubik\’s Cube in metallic steel, standing on its tip beneath the city\’s downtown skyscrapers. Beside it is the Jessie Street Power Substation, a brick and terra cotta structure in the classical revival style, a landmark building first erected in 1881 that Liebeskind adapted to the project.\n\n
\nCelebrated architect Daniel Libeskind discusses his views of architecture as a spiritual and aesthetic experience, citing the examples of two sites he designed: the rebuilding of New York City\’s World Trade Center, and San Francisco\’s Contemporary Jewish Museum.
When asked whether he is Jewish, Mark Troy responds, \”You will be needing proof of that?\”
Published plays — especially those in anthologies — tend to be dismissed by the casual browser as specialty items, of interest only to students of theater history or to actors in search of audition material. Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick clearly had something else in mind when they compiled their lively new collection, \”Nine Contemporary Jewish Plays.\”
When they first started dancing together, Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras used to lock themselves in a studio for somewhere between five and seven hours a day. Together, they tried to make their bodies react in \”authentic ways,\” irrespective of how high they could jump, how fast they could turn or any other techniques their dance training had already taught them.
Admit it. Don\’t you feel just a little uncomfortable on Purim night, beating the tar out of Haman, shouting him down, cheering ecstatically at his demise? Doesn\’t it bother you just a little bit that the same tradition that encourages us to spill drops of wine at the seder in memory of suffering Egyptian slave drivers also encourages us to drink ourselves silly while hanging Haman and drowning out the very mention of his name?
In Myra Goldberg\’s short story, \”Who Can Retell,\” reprinted in the National Public Radio anthology, \”Hanukkah Lights, Stories of the Season\” (Melcher Media, 2005), a young girl is concerned that her school\’s holiday glee club is singling out all the Jewish students to sing Chanukah songs.
One thing that stands out is this: Hollywood is making Westerns again, but this time, the Indians are Arab.\n\nI\’m not talking about the early Hollywood Indian — a cartoon bad guy or buffoon who spoke pigeon English and was played by a white guy.
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